A progressive outlook on politics in Australia and abroad

Grubby deals and backstabbings and conflicts of interest, oh my!

Phillip Adams writes on his GG blog about the wheeling and dealing for party preference deals:

Major and minor parties were trading your votes behind your back in a process as frenzied as trading in stock. There was furtive buying and attempts at takeovers. There was insider trading, a market in futures, hedging and dumping. Not of BHP Billiton or Visy but of holdings in the Libs, Lab, Nats and Greens, with impassioned bidding for stocks so obscure you may not know of their existence. Or have forgotten that they exist.

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But in our system pluralism comes at a cost. One dark side of the story is the development of this black market in preferences. You scratch my back and I’ll stab yours. The voters are only dimly aware of its existence and cannot begin to comprehend its complexities and distortions. For example, it can lead to fake or front candidates who exist only to aid major parties in their preference dealing or to further confuse the voters.

Some time soon we should all think about a development that has put some strange and sleazy people into parliament, particularly in our upper houses.

The black market horse-trading that goes on, especially in regard to Senate preferences, which can have a direct and significant impact on Senate outcomes, is rife with contradictions and dangers. We have already had to deal with the ascension of Family First, assisted by Labor preferences in 2004. Anyone intending to vote above the line in the Senate should look carefully at the Group Voting Tickets and consider where their vote might end up.

For Adams, some of them seem to be fairly close to home, for his partner is the lead Senate candidate on the Climate Change Coalition’s ticket in NSW. Phillip has even recorded a Youtube video in support of the party. Needless to say given its name, the party adopts at least some policy positions that I am very supportive of. But what will their preference deals actually achieve?

William Bowe at The Poll Bludger had this to say about the CCC’s Group Voting Ticket for New South Wales:

The other is the Climate Change Coalition, which has put the Fishing Party higher than everybody except the Democrats and What Women Want. One wonders how those taken in by the Climate Change Coalition brand name would feel if they knew they were voting against the extension of marine parks. There is a very real chance they will end up finding out the hard way – the Fishing Party has been tightly preferenced by a range of right-wing micro parties as well as Family First, which also has them ahead of the CDP. When all these votes are added together, it’s entirely possible that the Greens will be overtaken by the Fishing Party’s Garth Bridge. Throw a Coalition surplus into the mix, and the Fishing Party could very well win a seat that would otherwise have gone to the Greens. I hope Patrice Newell has a good time explaining that one to her fellow travellers on the arts-luvvie cocktail party circuit.

While this is an apparent contradiction in preference allocations based on policy objectives, the real impact is likely to be negligible given that the Fishing Party is unlikely to poll strongly. However, Bowe also notes what might be a more significant arrangement – in Queensland, the CCC has put Pauline Hanson at number 5 on their ticket, after just their own two candidates, Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats and Larissa Waters of the Greens [536kB PDF; see p. 4]. Now, those votes will hopefully go to helping the Democrats or the Greens, but if neither of those candidates has the numbers, or if there happens to be a surplus, the preferences then flow to Pauline. Where does she stand on climate change?

There is an urgent need for a Commission to be appointed, one which has bipartisan support, to investigate all the energy sources available so as to better inform the public on their true impact of these on our environment. This needs to be done without delay, and must not permit interference from self interest lobby groups. The Commission would need to investigate, but not limited to, fossil/ethanol/bio fuels, nuclear energy, carbon trading, carbon capture technology, wind farms, solar, and other renewable energy sources, with nothing being excluded, before any further decisions on our future energy directions are made.

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The Greens claim that Mr. Howard’s statement “that renewable sources such as using wind and solar power would ruin the economy and cause massive job losses” is not true. What the Greens don’t say is that if their policy was implemented it would result in massive Australian workers’ job losses in those industries reliant on the fossil fuel & mining production. It is these industries that keep local small to medium businesses in rural towns viable, from retail sales to major economic income such as the trucking industry, plant and equipment sales and repairs, general retailers, and commercial service industries. Remember what happened to our timber towns in Queensland when the State Labor Government brought in the Regional Forest Agreement and locked up the logging industry and their value-adding businesses’ – towns died and people’s lives were forever irreparably damaged.
Only an unbiased and comprehensive full inquiry into the best renewable energy sources, without job or economic losses, is acceptable.

She sounds pretty similar to Team Howard (nothing new there – they steal a lot of their policies from Pauline): “We are not going to be seen to not act on climate change, but protecting existing industries underpins any climate change policy. And we need an inquiry – no commitment to emissions targets, no ratification of Kyoto, but examination of the options so that maybe then we can do something. Let’s be aspirational about it.”

In contrast, after Pauline the preferences go to Labor’s John Hogg – the party that is committed to ratifying Kyoto, to binding targets on greenhouse emissions, etc. And while the CCC is a single-issue party, I find it difficult to believe that the party membership’s values fit more with Pauline Hanson’s racist social conservatism than with a more progressive party, such as Labor.

William Bowe has begun analysing the preferences in some of the other states as well, and they deserve to be examined closely to pick out any “gotchas” in the fine print. Of course, the best way to avoid all of this is to vote below the line. The fact is, if voters were aware of how the GVTs work and the (sometimes) shoddy preference deals that underpin them then they should decide to do it themselves anyway. But certainly there is some irony in the fact that Adams is the one who is bringing it to the mainstream public’s attention.